Drowning
by Val-Creative
Summary: ZeroxKaname. "I might not be able to forcibly change your mind… and I would not wish to… we are much better off as opposing forces…" His pale, concerned hands over Zero's clenched noticeably. "…it is… as one might say, the 'nature' of our relationship…"


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_"I will swallow…if it will help my sea level go down…"_

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The first triggers of a red-hot hatred ruptured in the boy seated to the floor.

He screamed up at the stranger in the dark, luxurious cloak to the top of his prepubescent lungs, a stainless steel knife gripped between his hands shaking, _"Don't touch me, you vampire!"_ Zero roared out the final word like it coated his mouth with an ugly and bitter taste.

Little Yuki shrank terrified into the afghan sofa at his scream; she glanced silently at the two figures, one standing and one sitting, with her big brown eyes.

The pale hand that had hovered over the angry boy in a moment of indecision withdrew back into the cloak. Kaname stared back at this unfamiliar, weakened human child glaring up at him with dead eyes— _this_— another lost soul collected in this world— and understood that the child was wounded metaphysically.

_No, not bleeding physically_— at least before the shouting fit passed.

A small trickle of blood surfaced from Zero's nostril. Kaname could smell the harsh tinge of it, and though he was not compassionate by nature for anyone (besides the tiny creature watching from the sofa over her stripped cotton knees), he did not desire to be forced from Kaien Cross's home because of something that could be accountable entirely on his presence.

"You need to calm yourself…" Kaname spoke slowly.

_"Why don't you just leave us alone? Leave me and Yuki alone!"_ Zero summoned some more rage-induced courage, raising up to bang a fist on the vampire's chest, the blood-flow from his nose appearing to slow. _"I won't let you hurt her or me!"_

The young boy screamed again wordlessly, high-pitched with pain as Kaname grabbed the arm that had struck him, pulling up Zero along his tiptoes.

The Kuran vampire pinched his fingers around the frail human limb until he got the child to crease his struggles, lucky enough not to break bone. Kaname said solemnly, nose-to-nose with him, "Do not mistake…all vampires…for _HER_."

Silvery dark eyes, Zero's eyes, were drowning in many emotions after that— many Kaname could not identify with— many he could not afford to feel. Kaien Cross finally emerged from the dining room in his pink apron, scooping up a trembling Yuki into a hug, and addressing Kaname with his head turned away, "Perhaps it would be better if you came back to visit sometime later this week. Dinner is about to start."

"Of course," the pureblood let Zero go, speaking as lightly as he could manage, "You need to clean yourself up Kiryu-kun or another panic attack will increase the bleeding." Kaname felt Cross brush past him, throwing a cautious glance over his shoulder as the ex-hunter knelt down to hand the boy a napkin for his face.

Yuki strained in the security of the loving human arms holding her to peer around as Kaname opened the front door, spilling the snowy December wind into the corridor.

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Zero Kiryu awoke again, and again, as years burned out—

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_Mother…_

_"You won't disappoint us, Zero." Her smile is crooked in the front; her kisses are always gentle against the side of his face when her winter blue eyes close and her ash blonde ponytail drapes across her shoulder…_

_Her favorite weapon strangles her in the end; he watches panting through the doorway as her jugular opens to the metal string, her black sweater-clad form convulsing onto the snow…_

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_Father…_

_"We're not afraid of you, darling." His hair is soft and gray pressing as their heads touch; he smells of a once heavy spice and the cleaning oil of his sword. "You or your brother…"_

_He joins his wife to lie in melting snow-clouds mixed with blood, a large dark spot developing over the space of his white shirt clinging to his abdomen…_

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_Ichiru…_

_"I wish I was born as you, nii-san." He holds tightly to his twin's waist in the middle of the night when the fever spikes, tears forming in the corners of his silver eyes…_

_And they still fall as Ichiru lets out a screech of triumph into the wintry night air…_

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—and the darkness hugged him once more, lolling him back into a restful sleep.

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He called in mind the first nights being taken in by Headmaster Cross as…_upsetting_. The man had treated him with enough affection and discipline as if the young orphaned boy had been of his own blood…but peaceful slumber had not come easy.

Zero would return to the living world in frantic tears from a nightmare (_…or was it a memory…?_)— comforted in knowing that no one could see him with his shields down— but truly frightened of his loss of control. How his stomach would bunch up into _brutal _knots, how his throat would _burn_, and how water from his cold glass cup on the nightstand could not seem to _satiate _the sudden thirst that had snared him.

It was the same. Alone he would cry until the hated darkness would accost him— would take a indistinct shape and curl around him, until he was certain that the darkness had been a living entity— _a warm metallic scented breath in his ear, the ghostly flap of a wing_— and eventually his body would drift back to sleep.

It was the same even now.

He sat up from his dorm cot in the boy's side of the Sun Dormitory, digging the heels of his palms into his face. Behind Zero's closed eyelids his silvery eyes swell a glowing red color.

_A monster…like one of_ THEM…

The sixteen-year-old sighed heavily, removing his hands as the darkness of his evening surroundings spoke to him. _"You are a silver-death. A child-sorrow."_ It molded it's shapelessness into a taller, male built standing near his bedside. As Zero processed what was happening, he immediately sprang for the Bloody Rose on the nightstand across the mattress with incredible speed, but before his outstretched hand could snatch his gun— he froze into a strong, snug embrace the entity stilled him, pinned him into.

_"Since when did you have the strength to oppose me?"_

"What are you?" Zero spat.

_"I have always been near you,"_ the entity replied, "_You were younger and proud. You could not accept me for who I was, or even for who I am now..."_

The teenager's vampiric hunger lessened from the low soothing voice murmuring to him, from the blurred impression of a pulsing warmth the embrace gave. But his annoyance remained unbroken. "Get away from me." Zero said, growling.

"_So I chose this form. You understood then and now you have and will have no one who can understand you_..."

"I said, _GET_—!"

Zero hesitated. As his eyes returned to their original silver color, they stared inches away into a set of eyes a shade of a dim burgundy.

The features of the entity hardened into a more distinct shape— shoulder-length auburn hair, and a thick velvet cloak over a pearly white Night Class uniform. Zero retched himself from the clutches of Kaname Kuran who continued sitting placidly on his mattress.

He lifted an long eyebrow at Zero who snarled, _"I should kill you right here."_

"And that would solve all of your problems?"

"It would solve a couple."

Kaname did not look the least bit intimated by those words. "I did expect your reaction to seeing my true form as excessively violent but I hardly think this the time for a contest of strength. I can only imagine what you are feeling about these circumstances but I only think it fair to inform you that I only had your best interests in mind—"

_"Why? Why did you do…this to me all these years…?"_ Zero exploded, wishing desperately that the Bloody Rose was within reach.

As the older vampire paused uncertainly— giving off the inkling that even he did not have a proper answer— Kaname sighed, "As if I need to answer to someone of a much lower ranking then myself…"

_"You came into my bedroom without my permission…and touched me…"_ The teenager shivered at the memories of arousing warmth, his anger redoubling. Zero stiffened up as Kaname leaned over him, trying his hardest to avoid bodily contact with the pureblood and not completely fall backwards.

"You act as if I had physically violated you as a child, Zero-kun." Kaname sneered, "In that form I am limited. It would not have been possible even if the contemptible thought _had _crossed my mind…" He smirked, openly amused as Zero teetered from inclining and collapsed fully on his back to the mattress, surprised and unmoving.

"You have very little faith in vampires. I didn't expect that to change in many years."

The silver-eyed teenager recouped his wits, frowning.

_"Eat me."_

"Is that an insult or a challenge to me? Or…perhaps it is an invitation…?" Kaname frostily examined his companion from groin to neck. "You are very vulnerable right now." When Zero tried to roll away, the pureblood trapped his wrists with his hands. Caught on his stomach under the weight of him, Zero struggled, trying to kick backwards and found he could not.

Kaname shifted above him, a lock of his dark hair touching the edge of the teen's cheek as he whispered into his ear softly, _"Was it so very terrible for you all these years to be comforted…"_

_"By a monster!"_ Zero finished venomously, chest heaving tightly shoved against his pillows.

"And that is all I ever will be to you, Zero-kun?"

The following silence he took to be a definite truth. The boy beneath him was growing hotter, defiant with every passing moment. Intrigued by his behavior, Kaname loosened a sigh into Zero's ear, making his crushed hips twitch forward, "I might not be able to forcibly change your mind… and I would not wish to… we are much better off as opposing forces…" His pale, concerned hands over Zero's clenched noticeably. "…it is… as one might say, the 'nature' of our relationship…"

_"DON'T—!!" _

Somewhat stunned at the hysterical scream, the older vampire pulled back, leaving Zero the opportunity to quickly flip positions to where he could leaned face-to-face with his now pinned enemy, bloodless splotches in his burning face; wheezing; the white of his silver eyes prominent.

With very little difficulty, the pureblood could have easily thrown off the boy_— could_ send him headlong onto the carpet floor, and disappear into the darkness without any evidence he had been inside Zero's bedroom_—_ instead, he relaxed under Zero's weight, staring interestedly.

"Does this kind of domination appeal to you, Zero-kun?"

At this teasing question, the remaining pale circles in the boy's face filled with a bright blushing color, and Zero's outward show returned from looking feral and panicky to looking rather disgustedly down at his companion. "As if, _vampire_."

"I would have to disagree with you, _boy_—" Kaname stressed the last bit, an arrogant light coming into his rising smirk as Zero scowled, "it appears that a part of your anatomy enjoys this aggressive closeness." He made his point by momentarily glancing at the other male's slight bulge in the crouch of his pajama bottoms, still with that unexplained smirk.

The teenager narrowed his silvery eyes, his lips barely moving, _"…I'll kill you…"_  
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"…I highly doubt that…"_ That was when Zero's bedroom faded into blackness— as the shadows _(...or were they an illusion...?)_ gathered around them, and as a wet, hungry mouth pushed against his lips, the tips of Kaname's fangs crashing harshly to his own teeth.

Pushing his rapidly hardening arousal _(...back against Kaname? ....or was it the shadows this time?...or was this a horribly vivid wet dream?)_, Zero moaned into the open mouth and the throat he sucked on, and bit, and tongued unremittingly. He suspected that this was all simply a private dream of his own making, and rode it to the end regardless of the situation; mouth stinging and bleeding from his swollen lower lip; skin on his chest peppered with small, bruising love-marks; erection trembling as cool fingers coaxed him into an orgasm.

As quickly as it happened, his bedroom sharpened back into view. Kaname stood by the open window with his buttoned cloak swirling against the wind, and his uniform partially obscured by the rippling plum-colored curtains. With his auburn-red eyes on the boy lying motionless and sweating on the mattress, he licked his middle and ring finger coated— not with sticky blood— before addressing Zero distantly, "Have a restful evening then, Zero-kun. I may call upon you again sometime... if such another restless night grants it."

And he was gone, the curtains trailing out of the window as if half-heartedly beckoning him to return.

Lifting himself upright drowsily, Zero did not know whose blood he tasted on his mouth but wiped a dark, drying smear to the back of his left hand, before tucking his heavy head on his bunched knees until the awakening sunrise.

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**_end._**

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_VK belongs to original creators. Got this request about.... I lost count of the months. I might have been last year. Eheheh.... -fails- And this is totally the first and last time I will write for the yaoi version of **Zero/Kaname**. This was truly one of the toughest requests/pairings I've ever attempted. I guess what I was trying to do was show how...unique it is. And it really is when you think about it. It might have been because I don't really ship them...but damn... totally was draining. Just glad that it is all done and ready! **Graves of Dreams**... hope that you get to see your request all done ... and everyone else : ENJOY PLEASE! Reviews are like strawberry crack lollipops. Don't take 'em away from me!!!!  
_


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